Assessment and Redesign of Ga-Starfish: A Gamified Strategy for Agile Retrospectives

Abstract Gamification has become a strategic resource for software engineering supporting motivation, engagement, and collaboration in software development teams. In agile teams, the retrospective, a recurring meeting at the end of each iteration, helps to inspect how the last sprint went, to identify what worked well and to create actionable items. In the retrospective sessions, gamification can enhance reflection to foster continuous improvement. This paper presents the evaluation and redesign of the gamified strategy Ga-Starfish, designed to guide agile teams through structured, motivational retrospective practices. Unlike traditional tools, Ga-Starfish focuses on non-technical factors influencing team productivity and incorporates gamification elements aligned with ten predefined principles from existing literature. A formal framework was applied to assess the degree of gamification by quantitative variables, supported by an interactive Shiny-based interface that automates calculations and generates visual reports. Results classified the strategy as partially gamified (32.98%), indicating a strong alignment with cognitive and reflective principles, but limited in the integration of motivational and engagement-driven components. As a result, a redesign was proposed using five Core Drives from the Octalysis Framework to enrich the strategy's motivational balance. This study constitutes a replicable methodology for assessing gamified strategies and demonstrates how theory-based redesign can improve alignment with agile team dynamics. Limitations are acknowledged regarding generalizability and empirical validation, which are addressed through proposals for future research.